The Future(s) of Journalism dialogic workshop inquired into the problematics of three focal questions:
- How might we create insightful, enterprising, and investigative local journalism?
- How might we create a more diverse, relevant, and trustworthy journalism?
- Who holds the power and how can we distribute it evenly and democratize journalism so it can speak truth to power?
It took nearly two decades after the invention of motion camera for cinema to develop its own unique language, and understand the power of montage–the quality that fundamentally changed the function of cinema. In the past decade, the Web has dramatically transformed the media ecology, increasing access to all new media forms, expanding means of distribution, inventing new possibilities, but also disrupting many practices, including journalism. In this fundamental transformation of journalism the question that begs importance is: What will be the montage of journalism? What would give journalism its own language in this new media ecosystem?
In economy of scale, local news faces great financial adversity that really challenges its ability to do insightful investigative journalism. The gap between the interests of communities and the news is growing and the news media needs to find new ways to gain the trust of the communities it reports on–to be able to embrace a diversity that reflects that of different communities. Moreover, the concentration of ownership, the dominance of platform companies particularly Google and Facebook, as well as billionaires involvement in news ecosystem all point to alarming concerns over distribution of power. Therefore, we are investigating the social systems, media theories, and economics of journalism together as a pick-up community in a design action research context.
Workshop
Facilitated with a modified dialogic design method, this workshop co-created a generative conversation on futures of journalism. In multidisciplinary teams of news media experts, journalists, systemic and service designers, and policy analysts, the participants worked together to generate and discuss ideas and possible innovations, and to compose structured narratives to codify and represent the idea proposals selected.
Mazi Javidiani
Mazi Javidiani is a service designer, and media & technology researcher dedicated to untangling complexities. He is interested in the paradigm shifts in technology and their systemic behavioral, cultural, organizational, and societal effects.
Over the past few years, Mazi has designed complex services for different governments, user experiences for video games such as Jurassic Park™, taught UX design as an adjunct professor at MacEwan University, and worked as a design director in advertising and public relations. His interest in cybernetics and post-structural philosophy led him to Hexagram’s SenseLab, where he investigated autopoietic responsive architecture, and to the Topological Media Lab, where he researched phenomenological approaches to memory. As one of the founders of the Montreal-based art gallery, Studio Beluga, Mazi has programmed, curated, and designed several artist exhibitions and residencies.